Saturday, June 14, 2014

I've very consciously never posted a lengthy blog saying
that I support Israel. There are several reasons.

1.) I like to say things that might get heard, and I
don't think saying "I support Israel" would be heard.

Some would say, "You are saying this only to deflect
condemnation for your inborn Polish, Catholic anti-Semitism."

Some would say "If a Polish Catholic like you is
saying something positive about Israel, it's because you have been sold out to
the all-powerful Jews."

Some would say, "We always knew you were secretly
Jewish."

I have received email saying some variation of all of
these criticisms.

2.) I don't really feel like it's my job to say "I
support Israel." Israel does have a powerful lobby, and nothing I do or
say is going to contribute in any significant way.

3.) Support for Israel strikes me as such an overtly
obvious position, stating it publicly feels, to me, like saying "Yes I
believe that there is such a thing as gravity."

Yesterday I went shopping at my local grocery store. I
had a choice between five pounds of carrots from California or five pounds of
carrots from Israel. Both were offered at the same price. Though I usually
strive to buy produce locally, and to buy American, I chose the Israeli
carrots, as I have been doing since I first noticed them in the market.

I mentioned this on Facebook. A Facebook friend
responded, "How utterly obnoxious." Her words shocked and hurt me,
and made me realize that in spite of all my reservations, I would blog my
support for Israel, as anonymous, ineffectual, and insignificant as it is.

Below will be my random, idiosyncratic, and incomplete
thoughts about why I support Israel, and why I assess boycotts of Israel as
anti-Semitic.

The selective outrage exhibited by those who target
Israel for condemnation strikes me as so outrageous that it is utterly unworthy
of anything but intellectual and ethical contempt.

North Korea, a nation that is one big concentration camp.
The nightmare fate of 170,000 Untouchables in India. The treatment of Native
people in Latin America. Gender apartheid throughout the Muslim world. The
selective destruction of female fetuses in Hindu, Muslim and Confucian Asian,
and among their populations abroad, creating what Nobel Prize winner Amartya
Sen called a hundred million missing women and girls. The government of Burma,
that allowed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to die in the wake of
Cyclone Nargis, and refused to allow aid to enter the country. The open market
in little girls in Cambodia. Darfur. Boko Haram. I could go on.

In the face of all that human misery, anti-Israel
activists focus on a country slightly larger than New Jersey, my own state, a
country you can drive across in the daylight hours of one day, leaving generous
time for three meals and bathroom breaks.

The obvious ethical and intellectual question here is,
"Huh?"

The obvious response is "Give me a break."

The obvious suggestion is "What are you on?"

My second idiosyncratic and undisciplined response to
criticism of Israel. I've actually been to Israel, and I have lived among
Muslim Arabs from the Middle East – aka "Palestinians" – my entire
life.

If Israel really were the simulacrum of Auschwitz that
its critics insist it is, yes, it would be appropriate to focus outrage on
Israel.

Here's the thing. I've been to Auschwitz. I've studied
Auschwitz. I've published a prize winning scholarly book that cites Auschwitz.
Israel is no Auschwitz.

I know Muslim Arabs from Israel, Jordan, Syria and Egypt.
I've spent time with them in New Jersey, California, and in Israel. I've been
in their homes. I've shared their secrets. I've gone over their photograph
albums. I've met grandmothers and new born babes. I've met pillars of the
community with white collar jobs and young men who say that they were
imprisoned in Israel for terrorist activities. I've spent time with members of
the same family over the course of generations.

Muslim Arabs are not Auschwitz inmates. Auschwitz is not
part of their life experience. They are, for the most part, healthy, well-fed,
well-adjusted college students, college professors, pharmacists, jewelers,
furniture salesmen, dentists, and slackers.

I've been to Israel. I've spent time in Jewish areas,
Arab Muslim areas, and mixed areas. It's not Nazi Germany. Again, stating this
I feel like I'm saying "Yes, gravity is real."

Next time someone tells you that Israel is just like Nazi
Germany and Arabs live under conditions comparable to Auschwitz in Israel,
please ask for evidence. And show it to the whole world.

There is no evidence because this claim is just not true.

Some say that terrorism is proof that Israel is
comparable to Nazi Germany. Conditions for Arab Muslims are so bad, these folks
insist, that Arabs were forced, forced, forced I tell you, to become
terrorists.

To blow up school buses full of children, as happened
near Be'er Ora. To throw a crippled man in a wheelchair into the Mediterranean
Sea, has happened to Leon Klinghoffer. To murder Olympic athletes, as happened
in Munich. To stab to death a three month old baby girl, Hadas Fogel. To train
their children to become suicide bombers. To indoctrinate their children, using
official school curricula, into hating Jews as subhuman apes and pigs.

Yes. All of these atrocities, committed by Muslim Arabs,
with the financial support and religious blessing of the Muslim world, are
proof … that Jews are horrible people. Because Jews are responsible. Jews
forced Muslim Arabs to do these bad things.

How did Jews force Muslim Arabs to do these bad things?

Jews "stole" "Arab land."

Okay, two things here.

One. I'm Polish. Just about every single Polish person I
know is the period at the end of a sentence that includes the words
"dispossession," "concentration camp," "slave
labor," "exile," "displaced persons camp," "redrawn
map," and "genocide."

Talk to any Polish person with any consciousness of his
or her history and you will discover that that person standing in front of you
who seems so American was born in a displaced persons camp, or had parents who
were inmates in a concentration camp, or had grandparents who were sent to
Siberia, or was the product of a vast immigration driven by starvation and
injustice, an immigration that included labor under conditions that compare
unfavorably to the conditions antebellum slaves endured.

If they are just a tad more conscious they will be able
to tell you about great grandparents who fought the Russians in 1863 or the
Russians in 1920 or the Ukrainians and the Germans in the interwar period.

We had a country, and it was stolen from us, countless
times. Our border was redrawn. Areas that had been Polish for hundreds of years
are now Ukrainian or Lithuanian.

Germans were similarly dispossessed after WW II. There
were mass movements of impoverished, war-battered people who lost everything
they owned and faced rape and starvation, barbed wire and homelessness. That's
*normal* for us. It has been for hundreds of years.

My fellow Polish American writer John Guzlowski was born
in a DP camp. His father was in Buchenwald. His mother was a slave laborer.
Germans, Ukrainians and Russians tore his family's worlds apart. My fellow
blogger Otto Gross's German grandparents were exiled to Siberia. Lithuanian
American writer Daiva Markelis' family members were also in Siberia.

I could go on and on and on and on.

None of us use our family's nightmares as an excuse to
become terrorists.

Rather, terrorism has been an approved method of Jihad
for 1400 years. It didn't start with the recognition of the state of Israel. Mohammed
himself declared, "I have been made victorious through terror."

And … about that insistence that Israel is a modern
invention of European Jews colonizing the Middle East. Jews have lived in the
land of Israel continuously for four thousand years. Yes, the political entity
Israel has come and gone and come and gone again. But the people have been
there. Genetic research has shown this multiple times – check out Y chromosomal
Aaron.

Yes, many Israelis descend from European Jews, but many
Israelis descend from Middle Eastern Jews who were kicked out of countries like
Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, etc. My student Gidon was born in Iraq
and spoke Arabic as a first language. Iraq was an inhospitable place for Jews
and he and his family moved to Israel.

Anti-Israel activists focus on the creation of Israel
while ignoring the creation of Pakistan. Why?

Pakistan is a completely artificial creation. There was
nothing comparable to Pakistan before it was invented in the 1940s. The
Pakistan that was invented then no longer exists; "East Pakistan,"
after suffering from atrocities so massive they are sometimes assessed as a
genocide, atrocities inflicted by their Muslim brothers in "West
Pakistan," is now Bangladesh.

Pakistan was invented so that sub-continental Muslims
could have their own country. The invention of Pakistan resulted in the
displacement of 14.5 million people. Fourteen point five million people.
Fourteen point five million people! Hundreds of thousands, or perhaps a million
– no one knows for sure – died.

Why do the anti-Israel critics not SEE their own
hypocrisy on this? If you want to protest a completely artificial nation whose
creation displaced millions of impoverished peasants, and resulted in the
deaths of uncounted multitudes, why do you give Pakistan a free pass? Why? This
is not a rhetorical question.

Further, Pakistan is widely cited as one of the worst
countries on earth to live in. It is a source of terrorism. It is cited as the
most likely cause of the next world war. It has no concept of human rights.

Tell me again why Pakistan gets a free pass?

I'm veering off into a rant, which I knew I would if I
tried to insist that gravity exists, and that criticism of Israel defies
intellectual and ethical standards.

Some say that anti-Semitism in the Muslim world is all
because of Israel. Facts are not on their side. Anti-Semitism has existed in
Islam from the first. In the Koran, Allah turns Jews into apes and pigs. The
Koran tells Muslims not to befriend Christians and Jews. Jews are among the
"worst enemies" of the Muslims, the Koran says. Muslims must pray
five times a day not to become like Jews "who have incurred your wrath."
A hadith, or saying of Mohammed, says that the end of the world will not arrive
until stones say to Muslims, "There is a Jew hiding behind me; kill
him." "Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam,"
wrote Sufi jurist Sirhindi (d. 1621)

Yes, Christianity has a long history of anti-Semitism.
Yes, Christian texts have been used as supports for anti-Semitism. The most
notorious example is Matthew 27:25. There has also been a healthy resistance to
anti-Semitism in Christianity, a resistance that goes back centuries and was led
by the Vatican. One such example can be found here;
there are many more.

The point is that Christianity offers a serious
resistance to religiously-inspired anti-Semitism and such resistance would
benefit Islam and Muslims. The destruction of the state of Israel would benefit
neither Islam nor Muslims.

Israel is not responsible for either terrorism or
anti-Semitism, and terrorism and anti-Semitism are neither natural nor
inevitable. Terrorism and anti-Semitism are worldwide problems for Islam, they
always have been, and categorical rejection of both should and must come from
Muslims themselves and the world will be a better place for Muslims and
non-Muslims when that happens.

There's more to be said, much more. As I promised, this
post is random, incomplete, and idiosyncratic.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Raising a Flag over the Reichstag by Yevgeny Khaldei
Source: Wikipedia

Should Poles and Poland be grateful to the Red Army for
its actions during World War II?

June 6, 2014 was the seventieth anniversary of D-Day. I
celebrated on Facebook and on this blog. I expressed gratitude to the young
American men, average age 22, who charged into Nazi machine gun fire on Omaha
Beach and other landing sites.

My friend Natasha Vaubel wrote to remind me to be
grateful to the Red Army.

On Facebook, I acknowledged that the Red Army caused the
greatest number of casualties to the Nazis. I said, though, that I am not
grateful to the Red Army. I gave my reasons for this lack of gratitude. Just
one such reason. The Red Army invaded Poland in 1939, along with Nazi Germany.
After the war, I see the Red Army's advance into Eastern Europe as an invasion
and an occupation.

Facebook friend Magdalena Paśnikowska advanced her
reasons for gratitude to the Red Army. The Red Army made a huge contribution to
defeating the Nazis. The average soldier should not be conflated with Stalin or
other evil Soviet leaders, who did very bad things to Russians, as well as to
Poles.

A Russian woman, Anna Domasheva, responded to the thread.
Ms. Domasheva's response was so powerful and eloquent I asked for, and
received, permission to post her response. Please read it below, in full, with
very few, minor proofreading changes by me.

Ms. Domasheva referred to another blog post by me entitled
"What the Heck is Wrong with the
Irish?" Recently
news has come out about an alleged mass grave of infants in Tuam, Ireland.
People have been eager to attribute evil to the nuns who ran the orphanage
associated with the alleged mass grave. I wanted to say that we don't yet know
the full story of the alleged mass grave and we shouldn't rush to associate
cruelty to children with one ethnicity – Irish people – one religion –
Catholicism – or one order – the Bon Secours nuns.

***

Anna Domasheva writes:

First of all, if ever one person can stand for a nation –
and I believe we all can – then I beg you for forgiveness, for the pardon of
the unpardonable: for what your families, friends, and fellow countrymen had to
endure.

I read this thread from the beginning and I noticed how
closely the debate came at the end to Danusha's previous post ("What the heck is wrong with the Irish?"). Basically, it was becoming
the same question, but with "Russians" instead of the Irish.

I thought about other historical comparisons, and a few
names came to mind.

Feliks Dzierżyński: the founder and first head of the
all-powerful Cheka-NKVD police, the foremost organizer of the Red Terror,
having introduced torture and mass summary executions in Russia on an
unprecedented scale, unimaginable in czarist times. [Dzierzynkski was Polish.
The Cheka, his brainchild, went on to become the KGB.]

Wiaczesław Mężyński: successor of Dzierżyński as the head
of Cheka-NKVD, idem for the professional activities.

Stanisław Kosior: head of the Communist Party of Ukraine
in the 30s – and a major architect of the Holodomor.

Andrzej Wyszyński: a state prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's
Moscow trials (his favorite sentence: "Kill them all as the mad dogs they
are!!!")

These people are personally responsible for millions of
deaths.

No, they did not personally rape and kill hundreds of
thousands of women.

But do you believe that what the horde of dirty
"Ivans" did in 1945 was more evil than what did these refined
gentlemen – three of them belonging to ancient Polish nobility – did to Russia
during the years 1918 – 1953?

I do not think so.

They gang-raped my country, murdering not only its body,
but its soul.

They made – amongst other diligent servants of the regime
– the crime of Katyn possible.

One could be tempted to ask: how is it possible that in an
enormous country – run first by a bloodthirsty Russian lunatic and then by a
bloodthirsty Georgian thug – the bloodthirsty himmlers-goebbels-görings of both
the lunatic and the thug were Poles?

So – what the heck is wrong with the Poles?

Nothing.

Because a nation is built by its saints, not by its
monsters.

Because "my" Poles are not Dzierżyński, Mężyński,
Kosior and Wyszyński.

Can it be then that the army of thugs terrorizing the
women of Eastern Europe/Germany in the spring 1945 – had also its true heroes?…
albeit dead by the time Soviets entered Prussia?

The 22-year-old boys at Omaha beach could land in
Normandy and land heroically and the majority would survive (sad majority
though – 70 %) amongst other reasons thanks to their Russian counterparts: to
the 18-years-old boys – every bit as bright-eyed and bright-minded as the
American soldiers in D-Day photos – who were taken from their first university
years to the front in the 1941 – and were all dead by the time the thugs came
to Germany as winners.

No. No – happily enough, not of all them dead … A young
artillery officer, appalled with the atrocities of Soviet troops, was arrested
by NKVD in February 1945 in Eastern Prussia. He was destined to spend many
years of his life in the Gulag, nearly die of cancer at the end of his term,
overcome the illness and finally write a book that would contribute to changing
the world to a freer place. The officer's name was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
whose poem "Prussian Nights" Danusha cites in the very beginning
of the thread.

-- Anna Domasheva

Ms. Domasheva sent the following photos; please scroll down to read her reasons for choosing these photos.

Of the photographs, above, Anna Domasheva wrote:

Here are several high school graduation shots of 1941 – and
these are actually the last civilian photos for the majority of the boys and
the male teachers (and in the photo from the Leningrad school – also for the
girls, who would very probably die of starvation during next winter). The
graduation balls in the Soviet Union were held Saturday evening June 21, and
the war began at dawn on Sunday June 22.

The last two photos are by great Robert Capa. His famous
"Magnificent Eleven" at Omaha beach needs no introduction. The second
one is less known, though for me it's as emblematic of the World War II as the
first. The shot was captured during Capa's voyage to USSR together with John
Steinbeck in 1947-1948 (Steinbeck wrote "A Russian Journal").

The photo has no specific name, but I call it "Women
or Victory Day".

These women could as well be Polish, Slovak, British or
American – though of course it's above all women of Eastern Europe.

This is about the loss that no victory can restore to
you. About the solitude of Victory Day.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

English and French volunteers created art commemorating fallen D-Day soldiers. Source below.

Komm Frau by Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk Source: Der Spiegel

Whenever the anniversary of D-Day rolls around, the
French and the Belgians put on touching displays of their gratitude to America
and Americans for liberating them from Nazi occupation.

I am always touched by these displays, especially since
otherwise the French appear so sophisticated as to be above such old-fashioned
sentiment. French and Belgian gratitude is unalloyed. They never say, "We
are grateful but…" or "Those soldiers sacrificed their lives for us
but…" No. It's always "We are grateful to the American soldiers who
sacrificed to liberate us from Nazi occupation." Period. Full stop.

A remarkable expression of this gratitude is the sand
images created by hundreds of British and French volunteers to honor nine
thousand soldiers who died on D-Day. You can read more about this poignant
project here.

I expressed my own appreciation for American D-Day
soldiers on Facebook.

Two Facebook friends, one American, the other Polish,
objected.

"You should be grateful to the Red Army," they
said.

When I was a child, I met a loved one in Slovakia who had
been, when she was a child, gang raped by Red Army soldiers. She was
traumatized for life by this, and was never able to have children.

Historian Antony Beevor documented the pervasiveness and
brutality of Red Army rapes. See here.

I see the Red Army as invading and occupying Poland, not
as liberating Poland. Killing didn't stop in Poland in 1945. Russia had been an
ally of Nazi Germany and Russia invaded Poland in 1939, shortly after the Nazis
invaded Poland.

I see the Red Army as the foot soldiers for the regime
that demonized, incarcerated, tortured, murdered, buried in unmarked graves and
erased the memory of heroes like Witold Pilecki who fought the Nazis.

I see the Red Army as the spear for propagandist who
would utterly distort the history of Auschwitz and murder Raoul Wallenberg.

Oh, but you must remember that the average Ivans in the
Red Army were nice guys; only Stalin was a bad guy.

I have read many memoirs of Poland during WW II, and
average Ivans were perfectly happy to engage in petty and unnecessary cruelty
while carrying out the orders of their higher ups. Anti-Polish feeling was
certainly a live force in Russian culture and it certainly motivated some in
the Red Army.

Should Poles and Poland be grateful to the Red Army? Most
Poles, when surveyed, report that they would like to see monuments of gratitude
to the Red Army removed.

In one case, artist Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk, student at the
Gdansk Academy of Fine Arts, erected a statue, Komm Frau, next to a monument to
the Red Army in Gdansk, Poland. Szumczyk's statue shows a Red Army soldier
raping a pregnant woman at gun point. Szumczyk was arrested for telling this
historical truth.

You can read English language coverage of Szumczyk's
statue here, here, and here. You can read Polish language coverage here.

This question began a furious debate on Facebook, which I think you should be able to see here.

This blog talks a lot about anti-Semitism for obvious
reasons. The blog is devoted to the book "Bieganski:
The Brute Polak Stereotype." This stereotype is a way some cope with
the horrors of anti-Semitism. It's not we who are guilty; it's those primitive
Polaks.

Yesterday I was reminded that hatred of Catholics is
alive and well, and that it is no better than any other hatred.

Recently a mass grave for children was discovered in
Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. The Home was run by nuns. The children were
largely illegitimate and orphans.

It goes without question that anyone who knowingly
humiliated, threatened, hurt or contributed to the deaths of those children is
guilty of a terrible wrong. Of course all decent people condemn child abuse and
want it to stop. Again, that goes without saying.

More research should be done about this institution.

If the offending parties were members of any group other
than Catholic nuns, more research would be done. If the mass grave were created
by Native Americans, or Muslims, or Hindus, or ancient Pagans, anthropologists
would be all over the news, saying, we must research this to understand why
these children were buried so unceremoniously. What societal factors
contributed to this atrocity?

What's troubling is that people have been insisting that
child abuse is a Catholic crime. Their bottom line: Catholics abuse children; non-Catholics
don't abuse children.